Silent Complicity

The more we learn about Omar Khadr, the more it becomes apparent just how badly Canada has messed this one up. Now this morning we learn that our government knew that Khadr was being mistreated but that Stephen Harper isn't going to do anything about it. I guess he wants to look "tough" in front of his Washington pals. Or something. This is the man that came to power on the slogan "stand up for Canada" and yet once again he'll sit on his hands when real courage is required. Even Australia and the UK, often considered the two most steadfast US partners in the war on terror, have brought their citizens home from Guantanamo. Now it's our turn. Bring Khadr home. If the evidence warrants it, give him a fair trial in the Canadian justice system. No torture, no kangaroo courts, no legal limbo, no bullshit.

Happy Canada Day!

Take it away, Foster Hewitt:

Policy Change or Ministerial Cluelessness?

Maxime Bernier has now twice refused to answer a question about whether Canada opposes new settlement construction in East Jerusalem. The Canadian policy had been to oppose all new settlement construction, but now observers on all sides are wonder whether there's a new policy or if Bernier simply didn't know this file very well.

Insofar as there's one thing that seems to genuinely and legitimately piss off the Palestinians, it is surely ongoing construction of new settlements. Interestingly, the settlers are not well liked in certain segments of the Israeli population as well. Settlement construction seems like an attempt to gobble up as much of the West Bank as possible before any final settlement is reached. Bernier needs to clarify Canada's position on this matter.

Canada in Bali: A National Embarassment

Apparently we've teamed up (unofficially, of course) with the US and Japan to put out the message that "economic growth is just as valuable as the environment." The same group of countries is working against any kind of short-term targets - why do tomorrow what you can put off till the day after that? This is not a Canada that I can feel proud about, this is a shameful country willing to put short-term gain in the form of oil revenue ahead of the long-term danger of climate change.

What countries can execute Canadians?

Having seen that a Canadian man on death row in Montana is now suing for the Canadian government for lacking the courage to maintain Canada's policy of opposing the death penalty, it has started me to wondering about which states might kill Canadians, and for what reasons. The government of Hangman Harper said that it would not fight against executions in a place like the US because it is "democratic" and "supports the rule of law."

This is another part of the new Harper look-the-other-way policy about which I'm curious. Canada's back alright, back in the pocket of the US. We are supposed to friends with the Americans, not their subservient lackeys.

Lately one or two have fully paid their due...

...for working for the clampdown.

Iraq-invadin', climate change denin' John Howard is done down under. And for those who don't see a way to defeat Harper here any time soon, it should be noted that the CBC reports:

"The win marked a humiliating end to the career of outgoing Prime Minister John Howard, who became Australia's second-longest serving leader - and who had appeared almost unassailable as little as a year ago."

As recently as earlier this year, people like Mark Steyn loved to speak of the "anglosphere" as a cohesive unit - to them it must have seemed that now that a Conservative was running Canada it could join the US, UK, and Australia (though curiously New Zealand never gets mentioned) in making the world safe, for democracy or at least whatever the hell Bush thinks it is that Musharraf is doing in Pakistan.

Today one wonders if there was ever such a cohesive thing as a unified anglosphere as conservatives might have imagined it - rather than just coinciding right-wing governments.

What are we doing at the UN anyway?

Apparently Canada sponsored a resolution condemning human rights violations in Iran - and it passed. While this seems sensible in that most observers would tell you that, yes, there are rights violations in Iran, what is mind boggling though is how you set this in the context of how the Conservatives have treated other UN resolutions or other expressions of concern for human rights.

Canada would not place a simple phone call to support a death penalty resolution recently. This could not be done because our people at the UN were busy on other, unspecified, resolutions. Last year, Canada could not even get behind a resolution to investigate Israel's use of collective punishment in the Gaza Strip.

In the meantime, if you raise questions about Canada's own actions in Afghanistan, it's because you hate our troops. We are no better at home than we are abroad.

When Canada took a stand on an issue at the UN, there used to be some moral weight behind it - or at least the sense that we were an independent-minded agent. Now we appear to be useful idiots for the US and Israel. At home, when there were serious problems with our mistreatment of Somali prisoners we went to the trouble of a public inquiry. Now the government accuses critics of lacking patriotism.

What this does is drain all the credibility out of our efforts at the UN. When we now condemn Iran's government it appears to be less an exercise in legitimately criticizing the immoral actions of its government and more an effort to establish our bona fides with the US and Israel.

Asking the wrong question about Afghanistan

This quote struck me as exactly what's wrong with how some people frame the debate about Canada in Afghanistan:

"In the shoddy, shallow, squalid and grotesquely politicized 'debate' in Canada about Afghanistan and the role of our military there, the one question that matters more than any other is how we can prevent the return of this kind of savagery, still wreaking its havoc just across the border in Pakistan"

Shoddy, shallow, squalid. This has all the hallmarks of the sort of self-hating conservative Canadian mindset (Andrew Coyne sinks into this every so often). That's not the problem I want to deal with now. My greater concern comes from framing the debate as "how can we prevent the return of this kind of savagery" when I think we have yet to answer whether we can prevent anything in Afghanistan.

Sure, we can occupy the country, we can control the airspace, we can go into a village (more than once, if need be) and clear out all the apparent bad guys. All this will be for nothing though if the Afghans (or even a good-sized percentage of them) simply refuse us. It is not as though they are without reason. Let's remember who we installed as their new leaders - essentially the non-Taliban warlords. We're also killing the livelihood of too many farmers to deal with heroin on our shores.

We might drive some more extreme elements of Taliban rule underground or to the fringes of Afghan society, but I do not believe that we can fully do away with it in five or ten years. Perhaps we can not do away with it at all. If a great number of Afghans are simply not interested in elections, constitutional government, and the other elements of a modern nation state - these will leave with the last C-17 to fly out of the country.

It would be nice to think that we could really, permanently effect change for those oppressed by the Taliban or whoever, I just do not believe it's possible that a bunch of strangers speaking an alien language and living in armed camps can remake a whole society - no matter how genuine or well-intentioned they may be.

We're gonna have a fair trial, then we'll hang'em

Once again Omar Khadr is facing the Guantanamo kangaroo court. As has been the case, Canada's Crusty Government will study its shoes and pretend nothing is happening:

"Unlike other Western governments who secured the release of their citizens, Canada has refused to intervene in Khadr's case. A Foreign Affairs official here to observe today's hearing said she could not comment."

I don't know why we are not interested in protecting the rights of our citizens any more. Yes the Khadrs are odious, but I don't recall where it says that our laws or our diplomatic corps are only to serve nice people. The fact that the government-appointed military attorneys and judges have already scuttled this process twice before is probably a sign that the Canadian government ought to step in and say to Washington "Look, this isn't working, your military people - those that ought to be most interesting in 'getting' Khadr - have already repeatedly found fault with the process, it's time for this to end."

It is shameful that we will not step in and end this poorly-conceived process as directed against someone whose fitness to stand trial is seriously in doubt.

The Torch Tortures Logic

In an effort to prop up the mission in Afghanistan and somehow prove it isn't an imperial enterprise, the pro-war Torch insists that we listen to ordinary Afghans on the NATO mission there. After quotes from four honest-to-God Afghans, The Torch rests its case. In a country of 30 million they found four people who like ISAF. Game, set, and match.

Okay, calm down, I'm using a literary device here known as sarcasm. What's really silly is the conclusion that the Torch draws from these four possibly representative Afghans:

"They're asking for our help. That's all they want: a hand up. It baffles me why so many Canadians want to deny them that."

The question that this reasoning begs is whether we are even able to offer the Afghans anything. It doesn't take a great many of them remaining sympathetic to the Taliban to really undo our efforts such as they are. Remaining sympathetic to the Taliban need not be a religious position, it could be interwoven with Pashtun tribal identity. Additionally we risk alienating a great many opium farmers by going along with the American fusion of the war on drugs with the war on terror.

There are so many ways that we can get this badly, badly wrong, there are so many things that we do not know about how to deal with Afghanistan that the idea that this mission is akin to lending the Afghans (or at least four of them) a cup of sugar is absurd. I don't wish to "deny" my "help" to anyone, I'm just not convinced that we have any real, longterm help to offer, I'm not convinced that girls won't be kicked out of school as soon as we leave, I'm not convinced that bans on beard-shaving won't be reinstated. Do we really think that a few years of NATO will undo centuries of tribal culture amongst subsistence farmers in a harsh, remote region?

Hey World! Send us your nuclear waste!

Apparently there is work being done on some kind of US-led nuclear power agreement. From the Star article:

"The initiative, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, proposes that nuclear energy-using countries and uranium-exporting countries band together in a new nuclear club to promote and safeguard the industry.

Central to the plan is a proposal that all used nuclear fuel be repatriated to the original uranium exporting country for disposal.

That should be big news in Canada, the world's largest uranium producer."

Oh, I feel good about that. Best of all, the article says that Harper is being characteristically tight-lipped about this. Perhaps he hopes that no one will notice that we are signing on as a nuclear waste-dump. A great deal of Canada's economic history has revolved around harvesting resources, exporting them to other countries that add value, and then buying back the value-added final products. Now we may be agreeing to harvest resources, export them to other countries who add value and then we will be forced to take back the waste. Stand up for Canada, eh Harper?

The Galloping Beaver has more.

What about the rest of our history?

Harper has made the rather banal statement that Conservatives are "unashamed" of Canada's military heritage. Scott and Dylan have pointed out that the implication of this statement is that the rest of us Canadians are somehow ashamed.

What about the rest of Canada's history? I wonder what the Conservatives are ashamed of if they crack open a Canadian history book. I'm guessing probably the Charter as well as anything else done when Pierre Trudeau was PM.

Harper doesn't like the Trudeau vision of Canada very much. Or rather, I suspect that he prefers the view advanced by people like Jack Granatstein that Canada ought to return a more "drum and trumpet" view of its history. Certainly, if Harper wants to set up the Conservatives as the default government of the country, rebranding this country as a militaristic one and setting up the military as sacrosanct to our national identity would serve to help him.

I have no problem with remembering our soldiers, or with war memorials, school trips to Vimy Ridge, and all the rest. Hell, I wear a poppy every November too. The problem though is the creation of a sort of national myth. By saying that Conservatives are "unashamed" one of the other implications that Harper is making is that there is nothing shameful at all in our military history.

We ought to learn about the staggering incompetence of Douglas Haig or the way in which the Allies botched the Dieppe raid. Can we have an honest discussion about the (in)effectiveness of firebombing Dresden? If we bring up these matters are we ashamed of Canada's military heritage?

Guantanamo: Eternal Prisoners

Whenever some new, invasive measure is introduced in the name of public safety or national security invariably, someone will say something about how the innocent have nothing to fear. So it was Gitmo - this would be a place where those thought to be Very Bad Men (are there any women in Gitmo?) would be sent to face a kangaroo court justice. Of course if you were innocent, you'd be cleared and sent on your way. No harm, no foul.

Right?

Wrong.

In a CBC News item today it comes out that several Uighur detainees have been turned down for asylum by the Canadian government. I find it significant that they are Uighurs as the current Conservative government seems to have a soft spot for anyone running afoul of the Chinese government (not a bad thing, mind you) - as the Uighurs often do.

In another case, Mr. Ahmed Belbacha is being forced to return to Algeria after having been cleared of any wrongdoing at Gitmo. Algeria has its own problems with Islamic militant groups and therefore may arrest and torture Belbacha anyway. The mere fact that he was picked up an sent to Gitmo seems to be the only evidence they need.

How many people are going to face this kind of fate? How many were just truck drivers or tourists or whatever who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is not a crime to travel to Pakistan or anywhere else that gets labeled as a terrorist hot spot. And yet it appears that once you are put in Gitmo, you are, in the minds of too many, forever a terrorist.

Kashechewan Can't Catch a Break

It appears that the federal government is going to rebuild the Kashechewan reserve in the same place on the same low-lying floodplain. Apparently it was too expensive to move the community to higher ground. So what? Will they keep rebuilding it every couple years as it gets flooded out each time?

Free Trade is the only Freedom?

What exactly does the RCMP think that the Council of Canadians will do that is such a security threat to the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting to be held in Montebello Quebec? And what in the hell does the US Army think it's doing telling Canadians where we can and cannot hold public meetings?! The US Army is not the law here, if Canada sooooo dangerous that our own police, intelligence, and military people can't handle things; then perhaps the US delegation ought not to attend.

These are not radical anarchists or militants or something, as far as trade liberalization critics go, the C of C is about as peaceful as they come. That doesn't mean they don't have sharp criticisms or their wits about them, but they are a far cry from the Molotov cocktail throwers.

It's a wretched irony that those that speak of breaking down trade barriers will erect every other sort of barrier, lest a dissenting voice is heard.

What Defines Us: Harper's Version

Apparently one of the reasons we are going to spend all this money on arctic patrol ships is that "Canada’s Arctic is central to our national identity as a northern nation." Oh, well, that comes as quite a surprise to me and the millions of other urban Canadians for whom "up north" means a place where you might go to a cottage.

Canada's Arctic is central to the stereotype that many people have of Canadians. I suspect that I am not a unique case when I say that I have never seen polar bear outside of a zoo, I've never used a dog sled as transportation, I've never spent a night in an igloo, I have never seen any fjords in person, I do not know how to hunt seal, I have never felt permafrost under my feet, my ratio of green to white Christmases is running about 1:1, and what's more, these things are not terribly high priorities for me either.

It's not that I never want to see the north, I'm sure it's interesting and/or beautiful at times, but on my finite vacation dollars I can make a much strong case for, say, Thailand, India, or even California. If I wanted to get closer to the pole, I'd even rather do so by going to St. Petersburg where there's at least an interesting historical city if all the natural beauty doesn't live up to its billing.

I don't want to slight northerners, their culture, or their landscape, but it is not how I conceive of Canada since it is not my experience of Canada. I suspect that a majority of Canadians are with me on this one.

Afghanistan: for what?

Once again today the story is the same: Canadian troops killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

Except it's not the same, this time they were in the Nyala, a vehicle that was supposed to be best-in-class for protecting against IEDs and the like. They had Scott Taylor of Esprit de Corps on the radio this afternoon and he opined that Afghanistan is not a place were we can "win" in any conventional military sense. He then went on to say that this recent attack had occured in any area that had been pacified last fall and was thought to be friendly to NATO forces.

While the supposed aims for any NATO mission sound noble I just cannot believe that we can accomplish them in any meaningful fashion. So what good are we doing if the Taliban (or whoever else dislikes us) can operate with impunity outside the perimeter of NATO's bases?

Canada Day Patriotism Mixer

Courtesy of YouTube of course!
Paul Henderson:

Oscar Peterson:

William Shatner:

Tommy Douglas:

That's all I got for now, tell me what I missed.

Haiti Can't Get a Break

Even if you want to leave the place, don't try the US, they'll send you back.

One part of me wants to say that it's really a shame that North America does the bare minimum to assist this troubled nation on its doorstep. Another part of me is wary of what the consequences of a large-scale intervention might be. Would we look like imperialists - even if our intentions were honourable? Would the Haitians even trust us? There is evidence that the latest round of coups and unpleasantness was sponsored by the US.

So what sensible, constructive approach can we take? (Aside from not fomenting another coup d'etat.)

Bad Idea of the Week: Elected Judges

The Globe and Mail is reporting today on a poll by the Strategic Counsel suggesting that two thirds of Canadians would like to see elected judges. Who are these people? What is wrong with them. Politicizing the judiciary is problem one of the things that is fundamentally wrong with the US justice system. Let's not go there.